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Michael Wolff: Obama Dines Out

When Barack Obama met with Fox News Chief Roger Ailes in a secret meeting at the Waldorf Astoria last June he cut him up. Obama put his hands between his legs, lowered his shoulders until he came to eye-level with Ailes and then, inches from his face, asked why he should waste another second talking to Ailes, who had only ever portrayed him as a crypto-terrorist.

The new president was much more magnanimous to the conservative media last night. By dining at George Will's house with New York Times columnists William Kristol and David Brooks, and the *Washington Post'*s Charles Krauthammer, he's single-handedly revived these guys' careers. (Too bad he can't help revive newspapers.)

Indeed, undoubtedly with design, he picked this special, print-centric, lap-dog group of conservatives with which to start his rapprochement, guys so out of touch with the current Republicanism as to make them almost irrelevant.

The Obama message is a crafty one: He's choosing these fretting, parsing, neurotic, limp wristed, desperate-to-be-liked print guys, over the crass, spitting, scary, voluble guys on television and radio, the Ailes-Rove-Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party.